UCLA’s meager attempt to “go green” denies students their rightful lifestyle choices
In an attempt to make UCLA “go green,” UCLA dining services now flaunt four new policies that are meant to improve environmental sustainability on campus. These policies promote Trayless Dining, “Waste Watchers”, Waste Reduction, and Beefless Thursdays and allow dining services to claim that these four programs are an attempt – not only to reduce waste on the UCLA campus – but also to educate students about forming green habits themselves…because telling me I pay $8.25 for a meal and I can’t eat beef is very educational.
As “going green” becomes more popular, it is easy to get caught up in the movement. We’ll do anything to be more like the righteous, hybrid-driving, tofu-eating, Hollywood image that we seem to idolize. The problem, however, is that this has become an emotional movement and not a rational one. “Saving the earth” is the feel-good drug that seems to blind students to policies that are ineffective and costly.
The catchy slogan “What’s Our Beef With Beef?” that promote reducing beef seem to be all UCLA needed to sell implementing a new green program.
In support of Beefless Thursdays, the UCLA dining services website explains, “Cows are ruminants, which produce a large amount of methane in their digestion process. Methane gas is a 23-times more potent green house gas than carbon dioxide.” This suggests that the reduction of beef consumption is not only acquiescing to the animal rights activists, it is actually reducing global warming.
However, eliminating beef one day a week is more of a mandated vegetarianism, rather than an effective way to reduce the beef consumption at UCLA. Regardless of whether or not the dining halls serve beef six days a week or seven, UCLA remains a high beef-consumer. As such, eliminating beef from the menu one day of the week in all dining halls just means that students have less choice.
Rather than eliminate beef in every dining hall for one day, why not serve beef exclusively in one or two dining halls all the time? Then students would be free to choose to be “green” or not, while still serving less beef in total.
With Beefless Thursdays, students who would like beef are simply missing out an on option of their dining that they pay for and would normally receive every day of the week. Regardless of how much methane cows produce, meat is an important part of one’s diet. And, while protein can be substituted for meat in other food forms, why should students who pay good money for their meals in the dining halls be forced to substitute if they would prefer not to?
If UCLA can support vegetarian eating at every meal every day of the week in the dining halls, then it should be consistent in supporting other forms of eating too, serving beef for those who may prefer the option of beef on a daily basis.
Besides, research shows that even vegetarianism is not eco-friendly. The machinery that harvests tofu and other meat substitutes routinely slaughters small animals in far greater quantities than the amount of cows to feed the same amount of people.
UCLA needs to realize that the meat industry is not going away. People like meat, because – let’s face it – meat tastes good. UCLA should be providing support for those companies that sustainably raise cows and sell meat to show a true example for students. This would also provide an incentive for beef companies that are not environmentally sound to change their ways in order to better compete.
UCLA dining did away with beef. Could your favorite food be next? The pattern of extreme environmentalism is a slippery slope.
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There are so many absurdities here that I don’t know where to begin.
1) To call the elimination of beef for just one day of the week “mandated vegetarianism” is an gross exaggeration. Beef is offered in the dining halls on all other days, and even on Thursdays you still have access to the entire remaining spectrum of meat. I wouldn’t be surprised that if dining services hadn’t publicly declared a “Beefless Thursday”, hardly anyone would have noticed.
2) For the above reason, I agree with eliminating beef from all dining halls on Thursdays. The concept of eliminating beef sounds more drastic on paper than in practice. Beefless Thursdays give students the opportunity to realize that consuming foods other than beef isn’t so difficult. Honestly, do you enter the dining halls every Thursday and eat your conspicuously beef-less dinner in torture and frustration? I doubt it.
3) Might I ask in what way Beefless Thursdays are “costly”? Last time I checked, beef wasn’t the cheapest food available. If you mean costly as in “beef-consumers are suffering horribly on a weekly basis from their Thursday cow deficit”, then I think you know what my response to that would be.
4) This is not an issue of animal activism. Your mention of animals slaughtered during the harvesting of tofu (I believe you meant soybeans, but that’s beside the point) is irrelevant. If you had actually read the information on the dining services website and in the dining halls, their logic is purely empirical and not at all opinion-based or moralistic. As you had mentioned, cows produce methane, more methane than any other animal. Additionally, because of the immense amount of water required to provide to cows for drinking, to clean their housing, to grow their food, and during the slaughtering process, eating less beef conserves water. None of it has to do with animal rights or vegetarianism.
5) The slippery slope argument has been and always will be fallacious and illogical. As if I wasn’t already rolling my eyes by the end of your article, that solidified my opinion.
My advice to you: stop whining, do your research, and if it pains you so much not to fulfill your daily beef intake, then go to Rendezvous.